Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (19 page)

Chapter 11

H
ow many times had he and Hamish worked with a sharpshooter, turning him from a British soldier into a tree or a mound of straw or a ragged edge on the trench wall, creating their own Green Man, so to speak, but with deadly intent? Changing his face, disguising his body, wrapping his rifle so that it was invisible to the enemy?

It had taken patience and ingenuity, and the Germans were quick to see through whatever scheme they’d come up with. It was an ever-changing battle of wits.

But then the Germans had had snipers—sharpshooters—from the very start of the war. Trained men who were very good with a rifle and equally good at concealing themselves. Some would lie in wait for days, or from the middle of the night to midday, invisible in bits of straw or sacking, using whatever came to hand. Shell-blasted trees or stumps, the ruins of a building, or even the rim of a shell hole. Their targets were any head that popped up above the top of the trench—in the beginning the British soldiers had worn soft caps, not helmets—to see what was happening on the opposite side. Making the British and the French keep their heads down also left them blind.

In fact, the German telescopes were so good that sharpshooters were ordered not to let them fall into enemy hands.

It was an old concept, sharpshooters, not new to the Great War, but the British had been reluctant to employ such tactics. Sharpshooters had been used in the Second Boer War, but the British had had to begin all over again when they finally saw the necessity of fighting fire with fire in 1914. Even so, it was thought to be not quite the thing. Not sporting to take out a chap who didn’t even know anyone was there, who didn’t have an equal chance to kill as well as be killed.

And the men who did this work were often shunned, generally considered beyond the pale. They seldom boasted about their skill, passing themselves off outside their own companies as regular foot soldiers. But sometimes when the truth did leak out, they were pariahs. Even back in England they told no stories, never bragged about their best kills, and often kept to themselves . . .

“Like Thornton?” Hamish asked.

That jarred Rutledge. He hadn’t considered the possibility. Yes, Thornton was reclusive, but he was also a very different sort of man from the sharpshooters Rutledge had dealt with. Scots, most of them, and often retainers on an estate where deer stalking was popular in the autumn, and for the rest of the year, they were more than a little feared by poachers. They possessed the eye of an eagle, one Highlander had told him, and steel nerves. It was all that was needed to take such a skill to war.

But now someone had brought that skill home with him, and for some reason had begun to shoot again.

It wouldn’t be the first time Rutledge had dealt with a sniper. Then he himself had been the target.

The question now was, had the war returned to
this
man, or had he found his former skill useful when he decided to commit murder?

Hamish said, “It doesna’ matter which came first.”

And Hamish was right. It didn’t. But to know might make it easier to find a killer.

Those lists of ex-soldiers he’d asked Inspector Warren to draw up were useless now, Rutledge could see that. Finding out who among them had served as a sniper would mean searching the War Office records. What’s more, he himself had often enlisted the help of the best marksman in his company, unofficially putting him to work when faced with a German sharpshooter who was pinning his men down. That had seldom gone into any records, a tacit agreement when the request was made. But they had got their man, and he’d been grateful.

Still, it hadn’t hurt to let these village men know that they were under scrutiny by the Yard, whether one was the killer he was after or not. Somewhere on the lists was the name he was looking for, and if he was getting close—whether he knew it or not—it might force his quarry to keep a low profile for a while.

“Ye ken,” Hamish went on, “that he’s verra’ guid. He didna’ copy what he’d seen in the trenches.”

That was true. This killer could think for himself. He could plan, he was patient, and he was willing to risk everything when he saw his opportunity.

And that made him all the more dangerous.

Rutledge considered whether or not to speak to Inspector Warren or possibly even Constable McBride. It was information that could be valuable.

And yet, if what Rutledge suspected ever became common knowledge, his advantage would be lost.

But he had his explanation now for the monster Mrs. Percy had seen. And it had been real enough. Only she hadn’t known how to interpret it . . .

He wondered if the cooper in Soham had suspected the truth. It could explain why Ruskin had quietly left Wriston without giving McBride a statement.

Better to hunt the shadows alone, as long as he could.

D
ownstairs, he waited until his dinner was nearly finished. And then he said, “Tell me about the housemaid Herbert Swift dismissed after his wife died. Susan, her name was.”

“Well, he was leaving for Scotland, of course, and Susan’s roots are here in the Fens. She didn’t want to go north. Nor did he want to take her. She’d been his wife’s maid, she reminded him every day of his loss. I can’t think she felt ill done by. And she’s been such a help to the Rector.”

“Perhaps she’ll remember something that might be useful.”

“It was so long ago, of course. Water under the bridge since then. But then Mrs. Swift came from Ely, didn’t she? As I remember, she was a Phillips before she married.”

That name hadn’t come up in connection with the wedding guest list, not as far as he knew. He made a mental note of it.

“I was just a girl when she came to Wriston, and I thought her the most fashionable person imaginable.” Miss Bartram smiled at the memory. “I looked forward to seeing her Sunday morning, and I tried sometimes to copy her hats.” The smile turned wry. “But of course it wasn’t very successful. She was one of those women who could wear pretty hats, and I’m not. Still, it was a pleasure for me. And I expect for my mother as well. But it had an unhappy ending, didn’t it? I don’t think Mr. Swift ever looked at another woman after his wife died. Mrs. Prescott asked him how he expected to entertain in London, if he didn’t take a wife. She’s Teddy Prescott’s widow, you see, and hopeful. But he told her he was intending to serve his constituents, not set himself up as a Londoner.”

“Then after dinner I think I’ll walk to the Rectory and have a word with Susan.”

It was a quiet evening, and Rutledge stood for a moment, watching the ducks floating on the pond, gliding above their reflections and finally climbing out to waddle toward wherever it was they roosted at night. One of the dogs outside a house on the far side of the Green gazed after them with bored interest, then rested his head on his paws again with a drowsy sigh.

He had put it off long enough. It was time to face the Rector.

But March gave no indication that he mistook this call as a cry for help. He listened with courtesy to Rutledge’s request, called to Susan to come down and speak to the Inspector, and then left them alone in the small Rectory parlor.

She was older than he’d expected, her reddish hair threaded with gray, but her face was still smooth and her eyes were a bright blue.

“I’m trying to find something in Mr. Swift’s life that may have led to his death,” Rutledge began easily. “You worked for him for some time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d kept up a kindly interest in his well-being in the years that followed.”

Susan Tompkins smiled. “He was a good man, you know. He had a love of history, and he was concerned about his clients, always looking out for those who needed his help but couldn’t pay his fees. Once he took a pig in place of what he was owed, then he never had the heart to butcher it after it’ud grown to a good size. He said he couldn’t bear to touch the meat.”

“By history, do you mean the history of the Fens, the background of the people who lived here?” It was always possible that Swift had stumbled onto something that could mean trouble for a family or its holdings. Even if he kept it to himself.

“I can’t count the times I dusted his bookshelves. There were books on Rome, six or seven, and weighty ones, you’d not dare drop one on a foot. And then there was Egypt. He bought all he could find. He told me once he’d have liked to go there. But of course there was no money for such a journey. Not for a country solicitor. I don’t recall any books about the Fens.”

But then as a solicitor he might have learned more than he should about his clients. He might not have needed a book.

“He had financial problems?”

“No, sir, he was comfortable enough, but it came from what he earned. And of course his wife’s money. Not that that was excessive, but it was what he called a nice cushion. That’s why he decided he might stand for Parliament now.”

An interesting point.

“Why did he go to Scotland?”

“His wife had just died, sir, and he was at his wit’s end. He wanted to close up the house, walk away from it. And then he was asked to go to Glasgow, for the Admiralty. Something to do with the ships on the River Clyde. Mr. Swift showed me where it was on the map. He’d always liked the sea, he even wrote to the Admiralty offering his services. And they took him on. It was, he told me, as far away as he could get from his memories. ‘There’ll be nothing there to remind me,’ he said. ‘I can step out my door of a morning and even the air will be different, and the weather, and the look of the land. I can shut out the pain and bury myself in my work.’ And that’s what he must have done because when he came back to Wriston, he was a different man.”

“How different?”

Susan considered the question. “Settled in himself? I don’t think the law was ever his calling. It was just a better way of making his living than farming. And in Scotland he’d done different things. It seemed to me that this made it possible for him to say yes when he was asked to stand for the vacant seat. He hadn’t gone to Rome or Egypt, but he was no longer really here in Wriston, if you know what I mean. He’d tried to take up the law again, but his heart wasn’t in it. I think perhaps it must have palled.”

She was a perceptive woman, Rutledge thought. “Tell me about Mrs. Swift.”

“Ah, she was the loveliest thing. Slim and fair and pretty as a picture. Her father spoiled her, but she had a sweet nature that made everyone love her. I was promoted to lady’s maid when she was sixteen, and I came here to Wriston with her. My own father was from here, and I still had two aunties here. They’re dead now, of course, but on my days off I’d go and visit them. So I wanted to stay here, after Mrs. Swift went. There was nothing left for me in Ely, you see, my parents being dead by then. Rector was happy to take me on.”

“Swift must have taken a flat in Glasgow. Who looked after him there?”

“He wrote soon after he got there, to say he’d found a flat not far from the Cathedral, and there was a girl he’d found to come in twice a week. ‘Nothing like you, Susan, which I must say is cheering for me. I don’t care to look back. Not even to the happy times. But I hope you are content where you are. I want you to know I’ll be all right, in a bit.’ ”

It was clear Susan had treasured her conversations with Swift, and that first letter. Rutledge could hear a slight change in the tone of her voice as she quoted her former employer. A softness too, that told him she’d been fond of the man.

But nothing in her memories helped him, as far as he could tell.

“After his return from Scotland, were there many visitors to Swift’s house? Someone he’d known in Scotland or served with there?”

“I have no idea, but I think I’d have heard sooner or later, if there had been. Someone was bound to tell me if he’d had anyone in particular come to call. I could still serve at table if he had guests. Rector wouldn’t have minded.” There was the smallest touch of wistfulness in her voice. She wouldn’t have left the Rector, perhaps, but the past still held her heart. She’d have gone to help Swift if he’d asked it of her.

“I believe Mrs. Swift was a Phillips before her marriage, and from Ely.” He listed the names of Barbara Fallowfield’s family and the Sedleys and several other people closely connected to the wedding, and asked if the Phillips family had known any of them.

But Mrs. Swift hadn’t moved in such exalted circles, although her father had been a prominent barrister. Which meant that her marriage to a solicitor in Wriston hadn’t been quite the step down he’d thought it might have been.

“Although pretty as she was,” Susan said, defending her mistress’s choice of husband, “she could have aimed higher. But she’d fallen in love, you see, and Society as such didn’t matter to her. Still, I think her mother might have been pleased if she’d married better. She was more ambitious than Mr. Phillips.”

A dead end, Rutledge told himself. Nothing here to lead him to a murderer. For all he could see, Swift had led a quiet and exemplary life.

Thanking Susan, he rose to leave, and then she said something that stopped him in his tracks.

“I remember one thing. It’s probably not important. But perhaps I ought to mention it all the same. I’d like to see whoever shot Mr. Swift brought in and tried for it. Mr. Burrows’s wife—she’s dead now, she died of the influenza—told me once that Ben Montgomery and Mr. Swift had courted the same girl before Mr. Swift went to Ely for a trial and met Miss Phillips. She didn’t marry either man, as it happens. But before she looked elsewhere, they’d come to blows over her. Out there on the Green, mind you, in front of half the world. I don’t think they spoke again for years and years, Ben Montgomery and Mr. Swift.”

“Who was this girl?”

“You’d have no way of knowing, of course, being a stranger here, but she was Miss Trowbridge’s mother. Up from Bury to spend a summer here with the Montgomery girls.”

T
he Montgomery family, it seemed, had owned one of the larger holdings, and it lay hard by the Swift farm in the direction of Soham. It was run now by the husband of one of the daughters of the house, Randolph Abbot.